UFC 96 co-headliner Mark Munoz has no doubts he belongs in the UFC

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Despite just five professional fights and a meager 19 months in the sport of mixed martial arts, Mark Munoz knows he belongs in the UFC.

He has no doubts about it. In fact, he said a lifetime of amateur wrestling, which included a Division I national title at Oklahoma State, has prepared him for whatever his new sport can throw at him, including UFC 96 opponent Matt Hamill.

As the 31-year-old “Philippine Wrecking Machine” recently told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com), his entire life has led to this one fight.

“That’s what I think I’ve been groomed for: for this moment in my life, in my career,” said Munoz (5-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC), who went to 2-0 in the WEC to earn a ticket to the UFC. “All the years that I’ve been wrestling, I’ve been able to wrestle at the high levels in world tournaments and national tournaments, wrestling in front of thousands of people, wrestling for Oklahoma State, where it’s a pressure cooker in itself.”

So stepping into a co-main event on an international pay-per-view broadcast in front of an expected 19,000 fans at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, comes with few jitters.

“I learned how to deal with pressure, and I learned how to just put it aside,” Munoz said. “So when people talk about, ‘Oh yeah, this is a big fight for you,’ I’m like, ‘Isn’t every fight supposed to be a big fight?’ Every fight is supposed to be the fight of your life.

“With a stage like this, you have to be able to put make all the media, just all the hoopla, and be able to focus in on what you’ve been training for for three months or four months or five months for the fight. You’ve got to pull all that aside and just concentrate on what you need to do in the cage.”

There’s also the matter of a likely hostile crowd in Columbus. Hamill (5-2 MMA, 5-2 UFC), a Cincinnati native, is a fan favorite wherever he goes, but in Ohio, the level of fanaticism is off the charts. (“I can’t hear the fans, but I can feel it. I pick up on the electricity, and it makes a difference,” Hamill, who was born deaf, recently said.)

No problem, Munoz claims.

“I think he’ll feel more comfortable because he is in his home state,” he said. “But at the same time, I wrestled a lot of times in front of guys’ home crowds. It’s no different. When you fight, you fight. I think when the cage closes, and they say, ‘Let’s get it on,’ that just disappears, and you focus on what you need to do.”

As far as UFC 96 match-ups, Hamill vs. Munoz is one of the more intriguing, especially for wrestling fans. In addition to his national title, Munoz was a two-time All-American. Hamill was a three-time NCAA Division III national champion and earned a gold medal in freestyle wrestling at the 2001 Summer Deaflympics. Many predict Munoz will have the edge in wrestling, but he said he’s learned plenty from Hamill.

“He’s a great role model for wrestlers,” Munoz said. “To be able to transition from wrestling to mixed martial arts, he’s actually a great role model for that. He actually was one of the guys I was studying while transitioning from wrestling to MMA. I’m a student of the game. I look at all the fighters and see what I can pull from them and what I can add into my repertoire and my style.

“But [tonight], we’re going to go out there and punch each other in the face.”

For the complete UFC 96 coverage, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of MMAjunkie.com.

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